Chapter 4 : Death and Resurrection

She let out another dark giggle, seemingly enjoying herself with the obscure spectacle she was causing. "But… I will admit, meeting up with you and your brother wasn't part of the plan. The date wasn't part of the plan, either."

She ran a finger upon her lips.

"I guess I just wanted to have some fun with you two, hahahahahah!" As she finished laughing, the girl gave Takeshi a look of contempt. "Don't worry, you piece of trash. You will be feeling so much pain you won't have any time to curse your own fate."

Yuuma's postured slackened for a moment-

"Here, catch!"

-And with a quick movement of her wrist, another light shoot out forwards.

Takeshi's senses flared, sensing the danger he was being subjected to. With instinctual precision, he raised his arms in front of him.

SCHUNK!

Raw wetness splashed against his face. Stumbling a bit from the force of the impact, he uncovered his sight.

The spear pierced through his elbow, bisecting his left arm and puncturing his left shoulder in the process. Small chunks of torn tissue held on from the exposed piece of bone. A strong smell of burnt flesh messed up with his sense of balance.

He stared at the severed limb twitching on the ground. The feeling was absolutely agonizing. It was burning his pain sensors to the point of soreness, and he couldn't withstand it.

But, no matter how much it hurt, he didn't scream, or cried, or changed his expression.

"Oh? Pretty impressive, trash. Anyone else would have been crying their hearts out, begging for forgiveness," remarked the sadistic woman. "But I'm not done. It's always exciting to play with the quiet ones. The moment when they break down and they reveal that weakness common to all humans…"

Another spear made its way into existence.

"…That's the most exquisite thing there is to witness!"

And then, she threw it at him again.

Takeshi's legs gave out. He lost his footing thanks to the exhaustion, and fell to the ground.

Slash!

The spear cleaved his right shoulder, barely missing his lung if it had hit correctly.

"It seems my aim is a bit off. But I guess it can't be helped. I normally don't take things seriously when dealing with scum."

Again the distorted noise. Again another spear.

"Don't worry. Next time I won't fail!"

Schunk!

Right thigh.

"C'mon, cry! Scream! Let that wonderful voice filled with despair come out!"

Schunk!

Left foot.

"Drop dead, you little shit! Beg for your life!"

Schunk!

Right shoulder again.

She kept throwing spears at him. It came to a point when Takeshi was almost completely covered on his own blood. From each and every wound was born an indescribable burning sensation.

She was missing vital organs on purpose. She was really trying to make him beg for his life.

But it was pointless.

Even if Takeshi wanted to beg, he couldn't. He didn't feel the need to.

"Haah, haah… You're a persistent type of insect, aren't you?" she told him with a panting voice. "Well, it seems you won't even talk. That's a shame."

His sight was blurry. He barely registered Yuuma's form in a world shrouded in darkness. But he saw, more or less, another blinding light on the girl's hand.

"Boring until the end, eh? I guess I had the wrong expectations," Yumma said with a hint of disappointment. "I'll just put you out of your misery once and for all."

This was the end. Takeshi couldn't do anything. Issei had died, and he would follow suit.

"Guh… Haah…"

A gurgling voice was whispered from the boy's mouth.

"Oh? It seems you're finally going to talk. Fine, then. Let me hear your final words."

He took some seconds to adjust his tired voice. Trying to stand up was impossible. The blood was drying up, becoming another layer to his soon-to-be corpse.

"D…o… Do…"

His voice was calm, but raw. A mixture of inhuman indifference, even in a moment such as this, and overwhelming pain.

"…Do it."

It was nothing more than a whisper. Yet, at the sudden change in Yuuma's expression, he felt compelled to say it again.

"Do it."

The girl seemed shocked for a brief moment, and then, she glared at him with disgust.

"Are you mocking me, human?"

But he kept going, each time louder.

"Do it!"

She clenched her teeth. Her fist tightened around the spear, which grew brighter and larger.

"So you still think you're big and strong, huh?!"

Takeshi knew what was coming. That's what he wanted.

"DO IT!"

Any sign of patience was lost. Yuuma stomped her left foot forward, launching her ethereal weapon at him with much more strength than before. A blast of wind followed the spear's wake as it hungrily closed distances with its objective.

A blow with the strength of the world crashing against him struck him down.

Takeshi stayed immobile. His mind was spinning. He couldn't think straight anymore.

He looked down.

Bloody and charred, there was a fist-sized gaping hole where the boy's heart was supposed to be.

Now, there was really nothing inside of him.

After tilting from back to forth, he finally fell on his chest in the same manner Issei did. Lifeless, and in a pool of his own blood messily staining the cold ground that served as his resting place.

He couldn't see anymore. He couldn't hear anything anymore. He couldn't breathe anymore.

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Does it hurt, Takeshi?

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The blood vessels ruptured inside of his body were starting to drown him. He felt heavy.

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Contrary to what many people believe, pain is not always bad.

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There was a thumping sound again. It wasn't his heart, which had been vaporized. It was the footsteps of Yuuma walking away from that place, finding none of what she did interesting anymore.

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Pain is not only a biological response. It doesn't mean we're just going to die.

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Takeshi's eyelids were closing. His world was disappearing. His mind was vanishing. There was only a familiar voice. A memory from previous life.

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When we feel pain the most, that's when we're more alive than ever.

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The darkness was devouring him.

But… far away, distant, was a flickering blue light. It was weak, flimsy, just about to conclude its existence. But there was a hidden sense of strength in it. Something that, even in its last moments, refused to give in.

He stared, and it grew wider. Stronger. Not enough to cover his sight completely, but surely enough to acknowledge its presence.

His conscience was shutting off. And just before blanking out, he heard it clearly.

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Be afraid of not feeling anything. The moment you feel nothing for anyone or anything… that's the moment you have truly died.

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And right then, the teenager known as Takeshi Hyoudou died.

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Blue eyes snapped open.

Normally, he would have expected to see the dull white color of his room's ceiling upon waking up. Although his sight was slightly blurred, he noticed a distinctive, softer brown color that didn't quite belong to any surface of the house he lived in. There was the sweet smell of incense and newly cleaned, sterilized floor floating in the room.

As his conscience crashed down on earth again, he noticed the fast, labored beating of his heart thumping loudly and quickly against his ribcage. He felt so tired that the strong ba-dum of the organ shook his brain painfully.

He tried to control his breathing. The seconds went on. A crushing weight inside of his chest burdened his spine. It made the task of filling his lungs with air difficult. He couldn't gather enough oxygen to speak his thoughts aloud.

'…What the… Why do I feel so tired…'

His left arm felt like a brick. His fingers would only twitch when he actually wanted the entire limb to move, and nothing else. Small electric jolts spread throughout his body, numb shivers travelling under his skin.

His mind, though… his mind was the most affected. Although he was actually seeing the ceiling, the images his sight was registering were from a past incident. His senses were still overwhelmed, stuck in a previous occurrence that had left a permanent impact on his psyche. Blinding flashes of what happened before intertwined and messed up with his faculty of perception. Reality and fiction mixed, and sooner or later, there was no difference between one and another.

Even though he was smelling perfume, feeling the softness of the bed underneath him and seeing a normal ceiling, his brain didn't quite catch up to those things.

No. He was experiencing something else. Remembering something else.

The sound of wicked laughter and contemptuous insults. The smell of burning human flesh. The bright crimson red of blood.

His blood. And his brother's.

Everything came back to him in a split of a second.

Yuuma. The date. Issei. The pain-

-And their death.

His body shot up upwards violently. The tiredness and disorientation were short-lived, quickly replaced with confusion and anxiety. He wasn't in real danger, but the suddenness of his awakening and the horrifying experiences that his memory subjected him to forced Takeshi to stay in great alert.

His right hand, still mobile, went up to his chest subconsciously. The shirt he was wearing was different. His pants, baggy and a little discolored, were also different. These weren't the clothes he was wearing before. There weren't even his clothes, actually.

The eerie emotion of perplexity kept puzzling his clouded mind. Nothing he thought about that specific incident made any sense. He couldn't connect the dots.

A core idea was buzzing in the back of his head. Something he was completely sure of. Something that, as macabre as it sounded, his instincts accepted as if it was a fact.

"…I died."

The words he mumbled to himself were not a simple question he asked to his brain. It wasn't a half-assed plead of confirmation to make sure he was right about what he thought happened, only for someone to prove him wrong.

The pain was real. The emotions he could feel were real. Yet, against all logic, he found himself on a bed, relatively unharmed and alive… but the recollections of that event stood out like a sore thumb inside his consciousness.

He was in bed. He was alive. Feeling like breaking down at any moment, but alive nonetheless.

So why?

Why did it feel so wrong?

Was he actually losing his mind? Did pondering about his worthlessness so much turned him into an actual madman?

He couldn't make sense of anything.

After what it felt like years, Takeshi recalled he wasn't in his room.

His right hand fell onto the bed in a lazy manner, as if it had lost its strength all of a sudden. Pushing the shock and bewilderment aside, he began to analyze his surroundings.

The bed he was in wasn't exactly big enough to contain the full length of his tall body. His toes were almost sticking out of the bed's edge. Pristine white sheets, well ironed to boot, comfily covered his form.

Incredibly polished dark wood was the material for the floor. One could see that it was old wood, but the work done on it made sure it wouldn't rot very easily. There was a nightstand alongside the bed, with only a lamp on top of it. In another corner of the place was a simple wooden drawer, and just close to it was a wardrobe.

The only window was on the left corner of the room. Sunlight peered through it, slowly warming up the calm ambient.

Hung on the walls were fancily framed pictures. Even though they were far away for Takeshi's tired sight, he could still make out feminine faces on them.

Takeshi kept looking, and he noticed something else. The detail that stood out the most was a cross on the wall, just in front of the boy's bed. A detailed carving of the Messiah could be seen on it.

Moments passed, and a very ridiculous idea made way into his mind.

"Where the hell am I…?"

Click

Just as his train of thought was coming to a halt, the only door in the room was opened. His attention was drawn to it. Shyly and very carefully, a person hidden behind the large door slowly pushed it so as to not make too much of a ruckus. The brunet stared with a half-annoyed, half-indifferent expression.

A black and white veil emerged from the small gap. Curious hazel eyes scanned Takeshi's form.

Takeshi blinked. The person blinked back.

"Oh, it seems you're finally awake, mister," came out the upbeat conclusion from the person. "Sorry to intrude."

The door fully opened.

It was a woman. A very young woman, slightly older than Takeshi, it seemed. As he noticed before, she was wearing a black and white veil over her head. Wavy brown hair smoothly came out of said veil and followed the form of her body down. She was mainly wearing a pitch-black robe, which accentuated her silky white skin even more.

Hanging from her neck and on her chest was a silver-colored cross.

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…

…

A nun.

"I can tell by your face that you seem confused, young man," said the woman to him with a warm smile, seemingly understanding his thoughts. "Don't worry, you haven't been kidnapped or anything. Although any reckless lady would want to capture a face as pretty as yours, hahaha."

He ignored the joke/flirt and proceeded to voice his questions with a raspy tone.

"Where am I? Who are you?"

Her smile didn't falter. She made a quick bow, and spelled out her name for him.

"Ichika Koharu, nun extraordinaire at yours and God's service."

Her mature, sweet way of talking didn't quite match the silly things that came out of her mouth, but he wasn't going to complain about something like that when Akeno Himejima existed.

"Now, as I said, you seem to be confused. I will clear any doubt you have, but first, I need you to answer a little inquiry of mine. Do you remember what happened to you before you woke here?"

The boy blinked again, taking some moments to digest the question. His gaze fell to the floor. His heart's thumping was annoyingly loud for some reason.

"No. I don't remember anything."

"…I see," whispered the woman with a dejected look – sign that Takeshi's quite pitiful lie had worked. It seemed she wasn't going to push for the truth that much.

Takeshi took ahold of his left arm. It was numb, cold, and still refused to move. If his memories weren't fooling him, he could clearly remember how that limb had been brutally severed from his body. However, and just like the matter of his death, that didn't seem to be quite real.

In attempt to forget about his messy memories, he carried on the conversation.

"You still didn't answer my other question. Where am I?

"In a convent, my dear," the nun immediately answered. "You showed up very late at night in front of our door, all bloody, dirty and tired. You barely had the strength to stand. We -me and a few other sisters- had to help you in. It was quite the gruesome sight!"

And even then, they didn't have qualms about bringing a complete stranger into a convent. Religious people were as kind and compassionate as they were careless and dumb, it appeared.

"And you didn't think about calling the police? That sounds very imprudent."

She actually laughed at the boy's remark.

"What are the police going do to, dear? Arrest you? Interrogate you? You meant no harm to us, so there was no need to call the authorities. If you have indeed committed a terrible crime, then it's not in our jurisdiction to judge you. It's in your hands to confess your sins and turn yourself in. Until then, to us, you're just a lost lamb who needs special care and attention, just like anyone else."

Ichika approached Takeshi. Her face loomed a bite away from his.

"But, if you try anything, then we will call the authorities without a second thought. Not before kicking your little butt, of course."

And with the silliest ultimatum dealt, she started giggling at nothing again.

"What I do find interesting is that you weren't injured at all. Just tired. However, your ruined clothes and the blood stains they sported told another story. Are you sure you weren't involved in something shady?"

He sighed, somewhat tired of being asked questions he couldn't answer. "Nothing I can remember, no."

Ichika stroked her chin in thought.

"Hmmm, aren't you one of these kids who go to these late night parties… Eh, how are they called…Orgies?"

"No, absolutely not."

Takeshi's quick and dry answer was met with more giggles. The nun stuck her tongue out in a playful manner.

"Just kidding, dear. I don't live in a box."

…Even if it was a joke, the boy shuddered at the simple thought of it. Him? In an orgy? His worth as a human being was almost non-existent, but he wanted to believe he had enough self-respect to not be involved in that kind of parties.

"You sure have a crude humor for a nun," the brunet told her.

"And you sure are a special kind of prude for someone so young, dear," she rebutted swiftly. The boy found himself a little baffled at the extravagant personality of this person, but he wasn't exactly surprised or interested in her at all.

Her insult was not that big of a deal, either. The words would have hurt more if Takeshi cared about women or their bodies, unlike a certain someone.

A certain someone that was dead.

He pushed that memory aside.

"As you can see," continued Ichika, "we have lent you some spare clothes. Going around with those rags you were wearing last night would have been outrageous, really. You can keep them, since they're for charity."

Takeshi's eyes widened a little. "Wait. Charity clothes? Doesn't that mean you-?"

The woman tilted her head, eyes down with an apologetic expression.

"I'm sorry, dear. You didn't look like you had much energy to do anything. I took it upon myself to take off your previous clothes and change you into something better. Don't worry, I didn't look!"

The boy's eyes bore into her soul as clear disgust painted his features. He couldn't believe someone actually stripped him off and he wasn't able to do anything. What kind of convent was this, anyway?

Suddenly, something made her quirked lips droop a little. "Oh my! I completely forgot to ask for your name. Could you grant me the pleasure, my dear?"

He looked away, not particularly inclined to make his greetings look flashy. "…Takeshi."

Ichika clasped her hands together at the mention of his name, mouth agape.

"Takeshi… as in, strong and healthy? That's quite manly! But…you don't look like one?"

He had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. "It's none of your business," he finally answered.

Takeshi was growing tired of this whole ordeal. He didn't possess enough energy nor did he care that much about this woman to keep talking with her. There were things he needed to do, and staying in a convent wouldn't solve anything.

But, something bothered him.

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